Yawnball Sweeps Through The ACC

by Akula Wolf on May 10, 2011 3:56 PM EDT

Austin pointed out this morning that the ACC has slowly been, well, slowing down:

Average pace for ACC teams 2003-2011: 69.9, 69.4, 69.2, 68.0, 67.9, 69.1, 68.3, 67.7, 67.4. Slowly morphing into the Big 10!

Morphing into the Big Ten--there go all my Big Ten Super Happy Fun Yawn Time jokes. The dive hasn't brought the league down to the Big Ten's level--and the ACC will never be that slow--but it is heading south and, depending on your preferences, that's the wrong direction. Patrick Stevens added some analysis of the trend this afternoon, noting that things aren't likely to change with the recent coaching turnover.

Last season witnessed a pair of conference games (Virginia-Clemson and North Carolina-Boston College) in which neither team cracked 50 points. With a third of the ACC's coaches turning over again and schools opting for more methodical approaches, those might be far from the final instances of such plodding, low-scoring affairs.

Stevens really should have used possessions per 40 minutes rather than possessions per game--that way we can adjust for the influence of overtime games--but his point stands. Looking at the chart Stevens provides, it hard to feel good about the league's prospects in this department. Bennett, Donahue, and Brownell produced considerably slower teams than their respective predecessors. Mark Turgeon replaces Gary Williams, whose Maryland teams could be counted on to consistently finish near the top of the league in tempo. Gregory figures to pump the brakes a bit at Georgia Tech, while the Lowe-Gottfried exchange is probably a push.

Jeff Bzdelik maintained Dino Gaudio's relatively quick pace, but Stevens thinks that has more to do with the Deacs' incredibly poor defense than a change in philosophy. That may be the case, but without comparing opponents' time of possession pre- and post-Bzdelik, it's tough to say for sure. Wake's higher turnover rate definitely inflated their pace to some extent.

In the link to Big Ten Wonk I inserted earlier, you can see how the ACC fared in conference games between 2005 and 2007. (In terms of possessions per 40 minutes.) In the years since then, here's the picture.

Conf Games Only	Poss/40 min
2008	71.0
2009	69.8
2010	67.4
2011	66.9

I'm still working on it, but I think we can find a way to blame Herb Sendek for this. Prince Valium put a pox on the league before he moved to the desert, and then he got to work making the Pac-10 into another Big Ten as well.

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Comments

I think I said it once before ...

but as fans, I don’t think this number means what we think it means.

As you implied above, pace can be as affected by defense as by offense. That works both ways, of course. If you have an active turnover-producing defense, you can shorten opponents’ possession time, but if you have a porous defense, you can reduce it, too. If you have just a really good fg percentage limiting defense, your opponents might keep the ball a long time, and then … just not do anything with it. And that can be fun to watch too.

On offense, you can have many possessions if you turn the ball over quickly. I don’t want to see that kind of fast team. You can also have fewer possessions if you have a good offensive rebounding team (right? that’s counted as the same possession, right?), and I know I like watching that.

I don’t particularly care how many possessions we get during a game. I care that they’re effective. And I care that they’re full of action. Standing around for 20 seconds is more boring than passing around and cutting for 30. A sieve of a defense is more boring than a throttle the life out of you defense.

Oh and lots of free throws is HELLA-boring. Especially if it’s the other team. They should track “action per 40 minutes”. That is a stat I could get behind.

by PeeDub on May 10, 2011 5:13 PM EDT reply actions